Fran Fraschilla is not quite sure why ESPN tabbed him, in 2004, to become the network’s go-to source for information on international basketball prospects. But he has embraced that role.

Two days before this year’s N.B.A. draft, Fraschilla landed in New York for meetings and rehearsals concerning Thursday’s broadcast. This is when he became what he calls the special-teams coach, charged with informing N.B.A. fans about players with consonant-filled names from the Baltics, or teenagers from the Mediterranean, or lanky projects from Africa.

And still, as he sat in the lobby of the W New York-Downtown hotel, his mind went wandering.

“I would love to be in Crete this week,” he said.

Perhaps only Fraschilla would know, or care, that a FIBA tournament there in Iraklion, for players under 19, was running concurrently with the draft, the N.B.A.’s biggest summer event. And perhaps only Fraschilla would know, or care, that future N.B.A. prospects were participating.

But the fact that Fraschilla does know, and does care, is part of the unlikely career transformation for a former coach of Manhattan, St. John’s and New Mexico. The oldest of seven children from the Sheepshead Bay area of Brooklyn, Fraschilla never played overseas, never coached overseas, never spent more than a handful of weeks at a time overseas and never learned to speak a language other than English.

Asked if he could think of another person that was as well versed in international scouting for an American audience as Fraschilla was, Jonathan Givony, the founder of the N.B.A. draft website DraftExpress.com, said no.

“He saw a niche and an opportunity there and took advantage of it,” Givony said. “He does a great job.”

On Thursday, when as many as five international players were projected to go in the first round, including three in the lottery phase, Fraschilla was called upon to provide detailed analysis of each, with film footage that he helped procure.

At 7:25 p.m., before a single player had been picked, Fraschilla went on the air to predict the three international prospects he rated highest — the 7-foot-1 center Kristaps Porzingis of Lativa, the 6-9 guard Mario Hezonja of Croatia and the 6-5 guard Emmanuel Mudiay, a Congolese-American who played in China last year after finishing high school — would all be gone by the eighth pick. He was right, although it took only seven picks to get all three players off the board.

And when the Knicks picked Porzingis with the fourth pick, Fraschilla immediately weighed in on the air, praising the selection as a “good gamble.”

“Why try to hit a single or a double when you can hit a grand slam?” he said of the Knicks’ decision.

“He’s an athlete,” Fraschilla added. “Is he going to struggle in his rookie year? Absolutely. But I like this pick.”

Assessing Porzingis was easy for Fraschilla. Other times, the information on a foreign player is less complete, although Fraschilla, 56, said he recalled only once in more than a decade of international scouting that a team drafted a player with whom he was not at least remotely familiar.

“Chu Chu Maduabum,” Fraschilla said, referring to a Nigerian player drafted 56th over all by the Los Angeles Lakers in 2011. Fraschilla pronounced his name “Mandelbaum” because “I knew a Mandelbaum growing up,” he said.

Fraschilla, whose primary role at ESPN is as a college basketball analyst, considers his international scouting to be like detective work. He has an entire world to canvass, but he makes only one or two trips overseas each summer, he said. Mostly he relies on a network of international contacts and a habit of watching at least an hour per day of film he obtains from abroad.

His interest in international scouting did not begin until his second season at Manhattan, in 1993, when he recruited a Spanish player, Jeronimo Bucero, as a favor to a friend overseas.

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Kristaps Porzingis was one of the two international players selected in the top five picks. As the draft has taken on a more global presence, Fran Fraschilla, ESPN’s source for information on foreign basketball prospects, has become more crucial to the broadcast.CreditElsa/Getty Images

Before Bucero’s senior season, Fraschilla organized a trip to Spain for his team, in part out of gratitude for Bucero’s time at Manhattan. Once overseas, though, as his team played against international competition, Fraschilla had his eyes opened to European basketball, he said.

“They took our game, which we imported, and they made it more interesting,” Fraschilla said. “I fell in love with the way they played the game.”

A year after his coaching tenure at New Mexico ended in 2002, Fraschilla reconnected with a former Manhattan player, Pete Philo, then an international scout for the Dallas Mavericks.

Philo had helped start a Reebok camp in Treviso, Italy, that became, for international prospects, the equivalent of the N.B.A. combine. The Eurocamp, as it was called, drew ESPN’s attention, and Fraschilla, who had started calling college basketball games for the network in 2003, was the top candidate to cover it. He said the assignment came “out of the blue.”

“Based upon the growth of the game, and more international players, we identified a need to have somebody really dive into it,” said Dan Steir, the coordinating producer of ESPN’s N.B.A. draft coverage from 2003 to 2008. “Just based on his passion for the sport, and awareness, and ethic, I thought he would be well suited for the position.”

For the 2004 draft, Fraschilla became the first analyst dedicated solely to foreign-born players, and the timing was excellent: Six international players were selected in the first round. Fraschilla spoke proficiently about all of them.

“He’s not someone who’s going to show up and act like he knows what he’s talking about,” said Steir, now a senior vice president for NBC Sports. “He’s done the homework.”

This past season, a record 58 international players were on the rosters of N.B.A. playoff teams. The reason N.B.A. fans remain skeptical of foreign-born draft picks, Fraschilla said, has to do with poor choices by executives in the past.

“Twenty percent of the league’s minutes this year were played by international guys,” Fraschilla said. “I mean, come on. If you can do your job right and you can find a Marcin Gortat or a Serge Ibaka or a Nicolas Batum, to me it’s less about the busts and more about better evaluations from these teams.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B12 of the New York edition with the headline: Analyst Speaks Only English, but He’s Fluent in Foreign Scouting. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe